


Through Her Eyes (LHAW18)

by misfitmonarchy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, LHAW18, Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2018, One Shot, precanon, tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 13:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misfitmonarchy/pseuds/misfitmonarchy
Summary: Laura’s life ended on a Thursday, of all days. One second she’s thinking of NYU and how she’ll tell her parents about her fullride scholarship. The next she’s holding her brother in the back of an ambulance while her home burns.Or the one where we see the fire through Laura’s eyes and how she copes with her brother.





	Through Her Eyes (LHAW18)

The world ended on a Thursday afternoon, of all times. Laura was just shy of eighteen, planning on getting out of this shitty little town and moving to New York for university. She had a plan. She had goals and the acceptance letter to NYU in the center console. 

She would finally be able to move out, away from pesky little siblings and Mom always bugging her for her alpha training. 

“Can you drive  _ any _ slower?” Her annoying little brother complains from the passenger seat. Laura smirks and slows down completely, almost to a full stop just to spite him. 

“If you glare any harder you might pull a muscle, Der. What’s got your boxers in a bunch?” He’s not actually that much younger than her, only a year and a half between them. Derek’s still got his babyfat in his cheeks though, and she can’t help but see him as a little kid she grew up with not the grouchy sixteen (almost seventeen) year old in her car. 

“Shut up.” 

“Rude.” 

“Can you just  _ drive? _ ” His eyes flash at her, and it’s still weird to see blue irises than his golden ones. No one at the house talks about it, but Derek drops his gaze right after. It’s been nearly a year now since Paige died, but Laura thinks that Derek still needs to talk about it with someone. Mom thinks Derek needs therapy and Derek? Well Derek thinks they all gather round in meetings on how to ruin his life daily. 

“Geez. Lighten up a bit, Der. We’re almost home anyways.” Laura sighs, pulling onto their private driveway that leads into the woods and away from the Beacon Hills main roads. It’s almost November, so the dirt road that leads up to the house is covered with leaves. 

She’s only half way up the drive when she feels it- an  _ ache _ so deep that she shifts by accident. 

Laura hasn’t accidentally shifted since she was twelve, and when Derek yells out beside her Laura has just enough time to slam the breaks before the smell hits them both. 

Something is burning- something  _ awful _ and it’s-

“Laura?” Derek’s panicking beside her and all she can think is- Laura can’t even think she just moves,  out the car and running to the house faster than her car ever could on these roads. Derek calls from behind her, but all she can think is the pure  _ agony _ that constricts her heart. 

She can’t breathe.

She can’t see.

Laura feels the roar of grief tear from her throat like it belongs to someone else. 

Her childhood home is on fire. The screams from inside prick her ears as she rushes forward. She has to save them she has to- 

“Laura!” Derek chokes out in horror behind her, but she doesn’t stop him. She’s on the burning steps of the house, screaming to her pack inside. 

“Mom?!” Laura cries out when she hears her mother’s howl. “Derek call 911!” 

The door has been lined in some kind of black powder. Laura recognizes it only when she tries to get to the inside of the house, only to be thrown back by an invisible barrier. 

“Laura!” The scream is terrified and sobbing, her four year old cousin is at the window, banging against the glass but Laura can’t reach her- she can’t get through this damn barrier!

“No no no! Please no! I can’t get through it I-” Laura chokes on the smoke but she doesn’t care, she has to get to them. She can hear her brother sobbing behind her, choking out an address to the 911 operator but Laura just  _ knows _ they won’t be here in time. She uses all her strength to slam into the barrier again, but all that happens is the force throws her back, knocking the breath right out of her. 

“What do we do?” Derek begs Laura, and she doesn’t know what to say because she has no idea. The pain in her chest doubles and she screams in agony, the sounds withering out to a solemn howl as the bonds break. 

She has no idea how Derek is faring, only listens to her pack’s answering howls. They can’t die. They  _ can’t _ . She’s not ready- she doesn’t want them to go.  

_ “Please!” _ She begs the universe.  _ “Please, no!” _ She screams until her voice is raw, tries to break through the barrier until her bones break and keeps trying. Derek tries too, but his control is still a bit thready since Paige’s death. The bonds breaking are too much for him to handle. 

Laura can’t hear anything but the roaring in her blood. The wolf in her takes control and she begs it to  _ help her save the pack- please- _

The barrier breaks, but only  _ just _ as the paramedics get there. Laura doesn’t know what’s worse, feeling the bonds break or having to trip through a burning mess and having to abandon the bodies she sees in order to find the stuttering heart beats of any survivors. 

Clarissa is on the stairs, clutching baby Sarah to her in what looks like just a calm sleep. Laura sobs over the smoke, because their hearts lay just as still as their bodies. 

“Hello?!” She calls out, trying to locate the one heartbeat she can still hear, it’s up on the second floor- but the stairs are already burned away and the fire department’s trucks are pulling up. The fire licks at her skin, but Laura doesn’t care. She just wants to at least save  _ someone. _

“Laur-” Someone is calling her, choking and gasping. 

“I’m coming!” She cries out, bracing herself before leaping up the stairs and flinching as they collapse. Clarissa’s body is buried by the debris but Laura doesn’t let herself look back. She can’t. 

The gagging and choking leads her to what was once the study, and clutching to the window pane where he’s clearly tried to escape- is uncle Peter. The smoke makes it all feel like a daze, and with a sob she tries to help the nearly unidentifiable man up. He sobs out in agony and she tries to carry him gently. 

“I’m here- I couldn’t- there was a barrier-”

“ _ Go- _ ” 

“No. No I can’t leave you I-”

“Laur… Derek needs you.” He whispers and she shakes her head. They can still make it- the door is on fire and the house is shaking but she knows she can-

“Peter- I can’t-”

“You  _ can. _ ” He stops talking after that and she tries to carry him out- he could still heal-

His heartbeat stops though and the bond breaks at the same time as Mom’s. It feels like someone has just stabbed her in the throat, reached down and pulled her heart out with it. Laura barely makes it out of the burning home before it collapses, only  _ barely _ able to control her shift as the alpha powers fill her. 

The first thing she does once she’s been herded over the paramedic station where Derek is sat, rocking back and forth in shock, is to be sick all over the shoes of the deputy helping her. 

“It’s alright kid. Sit down here…” The man is gentle, keeps his hands at a distance as she lets them look at the already healed burns. Laura feels numb. 

She can hear  _ everything.  _ In a way that is overwhelming for her even with her supernatural senses. The alpha powers are so drastically  _ more _ than she’d ever expected. Mom hadn’t taught her all she needed to know yet-  _ Hell _ she’d only started training for the position last year. This was all too soon. She wasn’t ready. 

None of this made sense. 

Vaguely, in some backburner part of her head, she thinks that she should be taking Derek away from the house, where he can’t see and smell their dead pack. But she’s frozen stiff, watching the flames as the firefighters try to put it out. It’s too late though, there’s no heart beats left in there. And if there were, there’s no way to get to them now that half of the house if collapsed. 

“What do we do now?” Derek asks her in such a broken and sob-sodden voice that she’s pulled out of her numbness to look down at him. 

“We’ll figure it out.” She promises, pulling him into her side and pressing her nose to his hair. It reeks of grief like the rest of him, but at least he doesn’t smell like burnt flesh and smoke. Laura isn’t sure she can say the same for herself but Derek just holds tight, so it must not be too bad. 

He devolves back down to more sobs, and she holds him tight, so hiding her little brothers shifted face as he mourns. Laura makes a promise to herself, then and there. That she’ll find who did this- because this was most definitely  _ on purpose _ . And she’ll kill them so painfully they  _ will _ regret this. 

If it’s the last thing she does, Laura vows she’ll avenge their deaths. 

She growls deeply, turning so she can worry about her sobbing brother and not the burning home. It’s hard to listen to the men chatting on the sidelines. They talk about how tragic it is, but they don’t  _ know _ . They can’t feel what Laura’s feeling. 

“Let’s get you two out of here, huh?” The deputy who brought her over is back but she just hunches further into her brother. 

“We’re fine.” She answers with her raw voice. The man doesn’t believe her for a second though, and Laura eventually gets Derek calm enough to shift his features back. The alpha power in her keeps her tethered to Derek tightly, latching onto the only survivor of the pack he’s ever known. 

“I’m sorry to do this, but I’ll need you both to give statements.” The man is maybe 30 at best, with clear blue eyes and brown hair that has the telltale signs of fingers running through it from stress. 

“Of course.” Laura answers, because Derek has gone quiet. She’s worried he’s in shock and keeps an arm around him, remembering how it felt like just five minutes ago that they were bickering in the car. 

Her world was crashing and burning, and the only one alive to witness it was blank and numb beside her, tired from crying and unable to look up from his shoes. Laura has no idea what they’ll do now. They’ve got no pack, no home and a hell of a lot of trauma to sort through. She thinks it probably hasn’t fully hit her yet. There are things to do, statements to give. Little brothers to care for and papers to sign. 

“So, the date. Today is… Thursday, October 18th.” The deputy, a man who answers to ‘Stilinski’ says while filling out some forms on his desk. Laura has left Derek sitting on a bench behind her while she’s sitting in front of this man. She’s nervous to leave him alone, but there’s a little kid sat beside him now. “What’s your-  _ Stiles _ . Leave him be- I- Sorry-” The man pauses, looking up and frowning at the boy trying to get Derek to look at his batman figurine. 

Laura offers a smile but it feels fake. “It’s fine.” She promises. She just wants this to be over so she can take Derek and  _ go _ . 

“He’s a bit of a hyperactive brat, I should-” The deputy stands but Laura stops him. Derek’s looked up from his shoes to the bouncing kid beside him. 

“Do you like batman? He’s super cool even though he doesn’t have super powers. I’m gonna be like him when I grow up. What’s your name? And why are you covered in dirt? Did you fall? Sometimes I fall. Actually I kind of fall a lot. But it’s okay because my mom has these band-aids from the store that have spiderman on them. I have some. Do you want one? I-”

“Stiles, I don’t think he wants to talk right now.” 

The boy looks to the man who is clearly his father. Laura feels the ache in her chest throb. He tilts his head as he watches them for a minute and she can almost hear his mind going a hundred different directions. 

“That’s okay. I can do the talking. Mom says I’m a good talker. Why don’t you hold my batman? He always makes me happy when I’m sad.” The deputy sighs in defeat and goes back to their papers. Laura fills it all out, gives hers and Derek’s statements and doesn’t breathe out any relief until they’re alone in a hotel room the police department has set them in. 

“I’m going to shower.” She says softly to Derek who hasn’t been more than five feet away from her since they were at the department. She feels bad that she hadn’t thanked the little boy there for keeping Derek company, it seems to have been enough to calm him down a bit. 

“Okay.” 

“Eat your food before going to bed.”

“Okay.”

“Derek?”

He says nothing but looks up with bloodshot eyes that Laura is sure match her own. 

“We’re going to be alright.” She promises, but it feels like a lie. He nods but just sits on the far bed, cradling the take out food someone had bought them. Laura sighs, because this is the best she’ll probably get out of Derek for now. 

In the shower, with the noise of the water drowning her out, Laura let’s herself break. She sobs and cries until she can’t breathe and lets the hot water wash it away with the smoke in her hair. She chokes down the steam and tries not to think about the smoke in the house, using more of the complimentary soap than she needs to until it’s all she can smell. It’s not enough. 

He’s asleep when Laura comes back, and she knows he hasn’t eaten but she’d be a hypocrite if she berated him for it. She doesn’t think she can even fathom eating either, it’s a shame too. Because someone has gone to the extent of buying it for them. 

That night, Laura doesn’t sleep. She holds her little brother close as she pets his hair. They’ll need to sort all this out soon, NYU is still waiting for her, and there’s no way she’s leaving Derek. Their family is dead, their pack is destroyed and their den is nothing but ash. Laura wonders how much it would cost to get a two person apartment in New York, instead of staying in dorms. It would suck, Derek’s always been the quiet one of her siblings and Laura knows that he won’t like all noise of the city. But if she can keep the scholarship she landed and  power through her degree, she should be able to at least get them a decent life set up. 

One away from this  _ place _ . The whole town feels like a graveyard now. One big gaping wound that twinges with every breath she takes. The sooner they leave this town the better. Screw social services, they’ll make it on their own. 

They have no choice now, it’s not like Mom is there to help them now. 

Derek complains about it but by his 17th birthday in December, he’s settled in just fine and Laura has him back in school by January. They find a little bit of peace, not too worried about finance as Laura had expected, seeing as the pack funds had all been inherited by the two surviving Hale siblings. It’s a good thing too, because she loses her scholarship halfway through her degree, because her grades dipped into the red for a while when the anniversary hit her harder than she’d thought. 

She has nightmares every night, but she knows Derek is hiding something from her too. She hopes he’ll confess when he’s ready, he’s changed so much from the fire. So has Laura but she was always, as mom would have said,  _ prickly _ to start with. Not Derek, he used to be softer. He used to be gentle and would hole up in his room with a book for however long it took to finish it before going to find someone to talk their ear off about it. 

But that was the old Derek. One that burned away with their family. Laura can see it in the way he’s started getting up to work out with her in the mornings at 5am. How he follows her lead in staying home every night even though she  _ knows _ he has friends because she’s picked him up from school a few times and  _ seen _ them. 

She feels like she should be a better example. A better alpha. 

Laura is still trying to figure this all out too though, so she lets him cope in anyway that he can. It’s only six years later, when she’s almost 25 that she gets a call. New York has a bunch of different little packs, but they’re not apart of any. She has a few alphas in her phone in case of emergency so when she sees it’s Alpha Santiago from the Brooklyn pack calling, she immediately thinks something is very wrong. 

It’s not untrue, but it’s also not quite the horrible news she’d been expecting. 

“I thought I’d let you know, there’s been whisperings. About that Beacon Hills of yours.”

“Whisperings of what? I told you when we came here, we don’t want to go back there.” 

“Which is why I was hesitant at first to tell you. But it’s becoming a bit of a threat and I’ve heard that your old territory might become claimed again, and not by anyone good.”

“Listen, I don’t want to uproot our lives here for some territory dispute.”

“There’s an alpha active down there. Says he’s a Hale.” Laura’s breath catches. 

“That’s not possible.”

“I know. But I looked into it.”

“And?”

“And now I’m on the phone with you, Laura.”

“It’s not  _ possible. _ I was there. I felt those bonds break-”

“I know. But… If there was any chance…”

“You don’t understand- I had to stand there and feel each person in my pack  _ die _ . There weren’t any survivors. I would know.” 

“All I’m doing is telling you, because from the sounds of these reports… someone is going to have to go and deal with it, or you can. I’m telling you, as a friend and ally, that you should go check on your old territory. It still belongs to the Hale pack. But it won’t be for long if the alpha, impersonator or not, isn’t dealt with. Apparently he’s feral, someone reported several failed turnings have already been found and local police is getting involved.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.” The woman leaves Laura with her thoughts, ones that point to home no matter how much she doesn’t want to go. 

“Laura? What’s wrong?” Derek asks and she looks over to his bedroom door where he’s just come out of. He doesn’t look anything like the lost sixteen year old kid she’d dragged out to New York. He’s 22 now, and looks more like their dad than ever. He’d grown out of his baby fat, and apparently any other amount of fat everywhere else too. Derek’s taller than Laura now, but only by two inches. 

“It’s nothing.” Which earns her a frown that he stole from  _ her _ . 

“Liar.”

“There’s an alpha in Beacon Hills.”

“What?” Derek looks as shaken as Laura feels. She doesn’t tell him that it’s possibly someone claiming to be a Hale. She won’t be able to handle the looks he always gets when the fire is brought up. It’s been years since it happened, and Laura doesn’t know  _ all _ the details, but she knows enough. 

She knows enough that it’s not Derek’s fault, not that her little brother will ever tell her what she already has deduced. Laura’s got a degree in psychology and criminal justice, did Derek really think she wouldn’t be able to find out? It hurts to know he’s still torturing himself with it. 

“Santiago just called, they said if I don’t take care of it then someone else will.” His look a little brighter for a moment before his shoulders drop. They always do when Laura mentions home, which is not often anymore. She knows he misses Beacon Hills, the small town with a preserve they could run in for miles. But they’ve adapted to New York well enough. 

It’s not pine trees and small family owned businesses but they’ve learned to live in the concrete jungle of New York. 

“Are we going back?” She sighs and shakes her head at him. She doesn’t know, but she knows she doesn’t  _ want _ to. 

“I don’t know Der. I don’t think I can…” His frown deepens and it’s almost funny to her, when she remembers how goofy that look used to be without the facial hair and straightened teeth. Now instead of an angry looking bunny, Derek looks as angry as she’s certain he is. 

Laura looks away from him and back out to their living room window, taking a calming breath as the city moves on below as if her world she’d built back up from the ashes wasn’t crumbling like a sandcastle. 

“Laura…” Derek comes close from behind. She leans into the familiar warmth of her brother and beta. “It’s time.” He says and she bites her lip. 

Going home means facing everything they left behind. It means people recognizing them and saying how  _ sorry _ they were for their loss. It meant that they couldn’t hide from their grief anymore. 

Derek’s right though, she knows it. They don’t belong here, in a small territory carved out just big enough that they aren’t imposing on another alpha’s land. It’s borrowed time, and it ran out the moment Alpha Santiago had called. 

“I know.” She sighs, turning back to her brother. “I wish it wasn’t.” 

“I know.” He says back, pulling her into a hug they both needed. Stiff as he might look to everyone else, Derek was still her Der-bear. The only one he couldn’t hide his underbelly from was Laura, and she hoped someday he might actually open up to someone other than her. She knew first hand how lonely it was to have no one to talk to. 

Laura knew what it felt like to be up late at night while her sibling slept and stare out at the apartment blankly wishing you had someone to tell you it would be okay. She wanted Derek to have that someone, even if she herself, was a bit of a hypocrite and didn’t. Not for lack of trying, but Laura just didn’t…  _ like _ people. She never had. 

Sure, she loved her pack. But they were  _ family. _ Trying to make new friends required talking to complete strangers and hoping they don’t think you’re a creep. 

The hug squeezes out the anxiety that curls and squirm in her gut, letting her relax a little. Derek always did give the best hugs. It makes her chest tighten when she pulls away. He really looks so much like dad did in the old photographs she and Cora used to read all the time. They’d laugh about Peter’s old high school pictures together and tease their uncle with them. It hurts to think about it, but going home is going to scrounge up more memories than this. 

“I’ll give my notice at work in the morning.” She tells him frowning as she looked around their home. The apartment had slowly collected memories of it’s own- at first they were all very dark and grief stricken, nights on end spent awake on the couch where they’d both just watch TV until one of them fell asleep. Slowly though, this place had gathered moments that made it feel like home. 

Derek taking over the cooking because he always complained when Laura made anything out of a box. Laura letting Derek try wolfsbane wine with her one night and finding out her brother is a total lightweight. The night she and some college friends had stolen a street sign on a dare; Stevenson Boulevard still hadn’t replaced it, Laura had checked. She smiled at their home with a sad smile. 

They were uprooting themselves again. She just hopes it’s for the better, and that she’s not leading her brother back to a place that served as a large tombstone. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm [misfitmonarchythings](https://misfitmonarchythings.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


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